Journalist Laura Ackroyd is on the move after a painful but all too familiar parting of ways with her sometime boyfriend, Yorkshire DCI Michael Thackeray. She's headed for London in the hopes of clearing her mind and focusing on her work for a change.

When she witnesses the murder of a teenaged immigrant boy, however, Laura's quick getaway turns into a drawn out nightmare, which is simultaneously the professional opportunity of a lifetime and a personal catastrophe in the making. Her plan is to write a feature article for a London paper on the murder and its social and cultural implications, but revisiting the bloody memory of that night is taking a psychological toll.

Meanwhile, DCI Thackeray is biding his time back in Bradfield. He's depressed at Laura's absence and faces a baffling missing persons case. A beautiful local high school girl has disappeared, and conflicting stories about her last known movements have Thackeray scratching his head. Safi Haque is by all accounts a dutiful Muslim daughter, but her parents don't want to admit what might have happened to her. When days go by with no trace of the girl, Thackeray begins to fear the worst.

Neither Laura nor Thackeray are very far from the other's thoughts, despite the geographical distance between the erstwhile lovers. As they separately go about strikingly similar tasks, neither can imagine the ways in which their seemingly unconnected situations may ultimately bring them together...or perhaps tear them viciously apart.